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HTML accuracy and search engines

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maharg

maharg

Technical User
Mar 21, 2002
184
Hello folks,

I'm interested to know if search engines favour sites which are fully compliant with W3C guidelines on coding.

Does the DTD Header data play a part in ranking? Do unclosed <p> tags upset spidering?

The reason I ask is that when looking at some competitors' sites, which rank highly, their code is awful!

Should I try and emulate them (!) or should I aspire to perfect code. If I achieve perfect code can I expect better or worse ranking?

Of course I'm doing my best to get title tags, meta tags etc. spot-on without spamming, but seeing so many crappy sites doing so well confuses me!!

Thanks, in anticipation of some guidance!

Graham
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I think keywords in your meta tags are more important than the quality of your HTML. Dont overdo it on the keywords though. Some search engines will not rank your site highly if you use the same keyword many times.
 
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Hi all,

A search engine will not be affected by poor coding in your pages, they will still spider them the same.

Also, do not put too much time into your keywords as nearly all of the major engines ignore them, you only really need them for any smaller engines that come across your site.

Hope this helps

Wullie

 
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I would aspire to perfect code ;-)

It will help in this way: imagine someone visits your site and they would have linked to you but didn't because your page didn't render properly in their browser.

A SE spider couldn't care much if your code validates perfectly but human-edited directories like Yahoo! and the ODP will reject your site if the page is not at least usable in all the major browsers.

Post a URL and I will have a quick look if you like. Joe Bananas' guide to Perth, Scotland
Bananas' tribute to Fawlty Towers!
 
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Hi srjavee, Wullie & Joe,

Thanks for your help and comments. A typical important keyphrase for me is 'panel meters'. I've worked hard to try and get my site ranked well, but it just bombs!

I was only wondering if I should go back to a simple old

<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>

All my page contents

</body>
</html>

approach, and skip all the purist compliance stuff at the top. I'll leave it to run a month or so, just in case I caught the search engines on a bad day. (It was submitted in its present state around 6 weeks ago, although I've made a few minor text alterations from time to time). I'm no web designer, but learning a lot from all you guys, and wish I'd found Tek-Tips long ago! Thanks again!
Site=
Regards,

Graham
l.gif
 
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